For viewers in the USA, you can catch the season premiere of 'The Royals' this Sunday 15th on E! Channel at 10pm... For UK viewers the show premieres on March 25th at 9:00pm on E! UK... Joan makes a dramatic appearance later in the series.. Don't miss it!!
Don't forget to tune into QVC UK this Sunday 15th as Joan makes a special Mother's Day appearance and celebrates the first anniversary of the launch of her highly successful 'Timeless Beauty' range of best selling cosmetics.. Joan makes two gloriously glamorous appearances at 1:00pm to 2:00pm with Jackie Kabler and then again from 8:00pm to 9:00pm with Jill Franks ... You can watch live here! Also tune in Monday 16th from 7:00 to 8:00pm.. http://www.qvcuk.com/Live+Channel.content.html?sc=LTVMH
Starring Liz Hurley and Joan Collins as a queen and her mother, The Royals promises to be as outrageous as TV gets. ‘I’m not trying to win an Emmy’ says its creator
Right now trash television is having a moment. Empire, the most ludicrous Shakespeare adaptation every invented, has seen its ratings soar week after week. Scandal, consistently one of the most popular shows on Twitter, has the president of the United States invading a country just to save his girlfriend. And now we have the Prince of England getting wasted in a bar and sleeping with an American who happens to be the daughter of the head of palace security. Welcome to The Royals.
That’s not the only thing that makes this show outrageous. The first scripted show on E! (which premieres in the US Sunday 15 March at 10pm EST), The Royals looks at the seedy life behind the scenes of the British royal family. Creator Mark Schwahn, the mastermind behind CW mainstay One Tree Hill, takes pains to say repeatedly, “it’s not the royal family, it’s a royal family.”
These fictitious royals are headed by King Simon (Vincent Regan), a solemn and milquetoast leader married to Queen Helena (Elizabeth Hurley), whose hemlines are too short to allow her to curtsey without exposing her crown jewels. In the first episode their eldest son Robert dies mysteriously, leaving their next son Liam (William Moseley), the one with the commoner love interest, in line for the throne. His twin sister Eleanor (Alexandra Park) doesn’t care: she’s too busy boozing it up at nightclubs and making out with whomever happens to cross her path. Sure, Prince Harry might have the odd nude photo scandal, but this is a lot more hot and heavy than the real Buckingham Palace.
Schwahn says this added level of soapiness is what makes the show so fun. “You have this place of vast wealth and power and we’re fictionalising it, so we can add greed and scandal and sex and everything that can give you that high-wire, soapy, modern day Dynasty world,” he says.
Casting Hurley, better known for her beauty campaigns than acting ability, certainly helped get people understand what he was going for. And if that didn’t work, casting Joan Collins to play her mother certainly did. Schwahn says that Hurley is adept in the part. “I was so thrilled that she has a great sense of self and a wonderful sense of humour and she’s brave and fearless in playing the villain,” he says. The show was originally pitched to Schwahn as an adaptation of a book calledFalling for Hamlet, told from the perspective of Ophelia. (A relic from that iteration is that Prince Liam’s American-raised girlfriend is named Ophelia.) Schwahn wasn’t really into that. “First of all, everyone dies, so it’s tricky to do a series,” he jokes. Instead he thought up the idea of a family drama, except the family happens to be the one that reigns over the UK.
That seems like an odd sell for an American audience, especially for a show on E! which is more well known for its red carpet coverage and the reigning queen of tabloid covers, Kim Kardashian. “We have one of everything in this day in age, but we don’t have a royal family,” says Schwahn of the appeal for an American audience. “I never set out to throw stones at the British monarchy. I wanted to create a fictional world and put it into modern-day London.”
Most of the characters are very dissimilar to Elizabeth, Charles, William, Kate, and the rest, though King Simon’s daffy nieces Penelope and Maribel (Lydia Rose Bewley and Hatty Preston) do bear some resemblance to two other crazy hat-wearing princesses.
Schwahn says that the show did hire a royal consultant to find out the real way that ceremonies would run and how protocol would be handled, but, more often than not, the reality wasn’t helpful in plotting the show. “The way it would really happen either we can’t do it, we don’t want to do it, or it won’t get us to where we want to be four episodes from now,” he says.
The Royals needs to be concerned about not running out of storylines too quickly. While King Simon’s question of whether or not to dissolve the monarchy, a lark he announces in the pilot, will be resolved by the end of the first season, E! hasalready ordered a second season that will begin filming this year in London and at Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire, which stands in for Buckingham Palace.
Since the show has already been renewed, Schwahn isn’t that concerned about reviews or awards, if he ever cared in the first place. He knows that delightful trash such as The Royals never gets its due. “I don’t expect to win an Emmy, but there are episodes that are such worthy, compelling hours of television,” he says. “I’m not chasing reviews because my audience isn’t going to read those things. The people who will love this show will tweet about it and that’s more where the foundation of the show is living.” Now, how many seasons do you think we’ll have to go before we get a royal serial killer?
LOS ANGELES — March 12, 2015 — Girl power reigns supreme as six former daytime and primetime soap stars take control of their careers to produce and star in a new serialized drama, in the series premiere of QUEENS OF DRAMA on Pop, Sunday, April 26, at 10:00 PM ET/7:00 PM PT, immediately following the network’s exclusive live broadcast of the 42nd Annual Daytime Emmy® Awards. A sneak peek is available online at http://press.poptv.com/promotion/qod.
Following its premiere, QUEENS OF DRAMA will begin airing in its regularly scheduled time slot on Wednesdays, (8:00-8:30 PM ET/PT) starting April 29.
“QUEENS OF DRAMA features a powerful, all-star cast of soap’s leading ladies, while tapping into the sensibility of female empowerment, taking charge and having it all,” said Paul Adler, Senior Vice President, Programming, Pop. “We’re excited to give fans a new perspective of these women with a reality series that debuts immediately following Pop’s exclusive live broadcast of the Daytime Emmys.”
QUEENS OF DRAMA is a 10 episode series that features an all-female cast working in front of and behind the cameras as they develop, pitch, and produce a new steamy series with the goal of landing a pilot deal by the end of the season. The all-star cast includes Lindsay Hartley (“All My Children,” “Days of Our Lives”), Crystal Hunt (“Guiding Light,” “One Life to Live”), Vanessa Marcil (“Las Vegas,” “General Hospital”), Chrystee Pharris (“Passions,” “General Hospital”) and Hunter Tylo (“The Bold and The Beautiful”) with special appearances by Donna Mills (“Knots Landing,” “Melrose Place”).& a special appearance by Joan Collins (Dynasty) ...
QUEENS OF DRAMA is produced by ThinkFactory Media, with Adam Reed, Adam Freeman, Aaron Fishman, Tim Laurie, and Leslie Greif, serving as Executive Producers..
English actress Dame Joan Collins is best known for her role as the passionate yet vengeful Alexis Carrington Colby on the 1980s television soap opera Dynasty.
Alexis was a groundbreaking character for women on television, Collins told the audience at Thursday’s Old Bags Luncheon at The Breakers, the signature event of the Center for Family Services.
“She was the first woman to dominate the boardroom and the bedroom,” Collins said. “She was ahead of her time. She believed that women can do everything men can do. I believe that, too.”
Collins looked back over a long and successful acting career that began on the London stage when she was 9. At 22, she set out for Hollywood, where she landed steamy roles in several popular films during the 1950s.
Her father had opposed her career choice, telling her it would be over by the time she was 23. “I’m not done yet, Daddy,” said Collins.
Collins is an author of bestselling novels, lifestyle books and memoirs.
“The harder I work, the luckier I get,” she said. “I’ve always believed in the power of positive thinking. If you really wanted something and you really worked at it, you would be able to achieve it.” Sold-out event
The annual luncheon benefits the Center for Family Services. Thursday’s event was sold out, with 570 ticket-holders.
Proceeds support the only emergency shelter for homeless families in Palm Beach County, and a program for victims of sexual abuse and domestic violence.
Collins said that, at 18, she was date-raped by Maxwell Reed, an Irish actor who would become her first husband. During the marriage, Reed slapped her and threatened to cut her face if she didn’t do as she was told. “I was very, very scared,” she said.
Victims of domestic abuse feel frightened and humiliated and often believe they are trapped or that they deserve what is happening to them, Collins said.
Collins said she left Reed after he tried to sell her to an Arab sheik for 10,000 pounds. The couple divorced in 1956 after four years of marriage. Reed died in 1974.
“I was one of the lucky ones who got out before it was too late,” she said. “I never let myself be in an abusive relationship again.”
In the second part of an exclusive interview with the Mirror, the screen legend relives her near-death experience from an undiagnosed allergy to shellfish.
From sleazy casting directors to embittered rival actresses, during a stellar 60-year career in showbiz, Joan Collins has seen – and survived – it all. But only just.
An undiagnosed allergy to shellfish saw the actress rushed to hospital and minutes from death after she ate a prawn.
The star, made a Dame in the New Year’s Honours, was rushed to hospital and given a life-saving adrenaline injection, having gone into extreme anaphylactic shock.
She recalls: “Years ago, I was having a party at my house and ordered a dish which was like paella.
"I ate this shrimp and suddenly felt my face blowing up – thank God this was at a time before selfies – and quickly took myself off into the bedroom to check what was happening.
“My face was literally expanding by the minute. We called the doctor, who told me to get to the Beverly Hills hospital, and I was immediately raced there in the car.
“When I arrived, my face had blown up to three times its size. I looked like a football.
"My eyes were sealed up and my tongue was so swollen, I couldn’t swallow. It was the most frightening experience of my life.
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Husband No.1: Joan married Maxwell Reed in 1952
“Two doctors dragged me out of the car and gave me a shot of adrenaline – the most near-death experience I’ve ever had. I very seriously nearly died.
“I’ve been tested since then and still have the allergy to everything fishy so I still have to be very careful about what I eat.”
While around one in 200 people have been diagnosed with a fish allergy, only a relatively small percentage of them suffer extreme anaphylactic shock like Joan.
Some get EpiPens, or adrenaline auto-injectors, in case of emergency. Which, for someone like Joan who has a fear of needles, is hardly ideal.
This also goes some way to explaining the star’s hatred of Botox.
Joan tried it once 20 years ago, only to walk out midway through the £300 treatment.
“Botox is disgusting,” she half-snarls. “It was agony. It’s far better to just take care of your skin and get a few lines, just like Helen Mirren, Judi Dench and, well, me. You have to embrace what happens.
“It’s like that 60:16 thing – 16 from behind, 60 from the front. I don’t want that.
“Anyway, I don’t want to pretend to be 35, I can’t pretend to be 35.”
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Hudband No.2: Joan married singer Anthony Newley in 1963 and the couple had two daughters
Here she pauses and raises a perfectly arched eyebrow, before adding: “Well, maybe in a good light...”
Witty, waspish and, when gushing about her husband Percy Gibson, surprisingly warm, the mother-of-three is wonderful company.
Unlike today’s media-trained Hollywood automatons, Joan is not scared of expressing an opinion. And, despite her glamorous appearance, the former Dynasty star is not averse to getting her hands dirty either.
“People seem to have this perception of me, that I basically wake up like this in full make-up,” she smiles.
“I spend time every morning on our terrace here in LA, watering the flowers and beheading anything that needs to be beheaded.
“Then I’ll come back in and tidy up – I’m a massive tidier-upper, and always plumping up cushions and emptying out ashtrays.”
Joan, of course, is not the smoker, having kicked the habit 10 years ago, meaning Percy is the sole puffer in the house.
When I ask Joan if she has a personal chef, she laughs in my face. Not in a Towie kind of way, but elegantly. Everything she does is elegant.
PA
Husband No.3: Joan married Ron Kass in 1972 and they had a daughter
“A chef? Who could afford a chef?,” she splutters. “I cook – I mean, I raised three children so why wouldn’t I? I do a great spaghetti Bolognese.
“We only have a maid in three times a week. I do it the rest of the time. We like our privacy. I seem to have this reputation of being some sort of diva, but I’m really not. Well, not really.”
After first making a cameo appearance in ITV show Benidorm, Joan recently signed up to appear in her third series. In it, she plays feisty hotel boss, Crystal Hennessy-Vass.
While the comedy is a tongue-in-cheek celebration of all things chav, in real life Joan does not strike me as the velour tracksuit-wearing type.
“I love the whole chav culture, it’s hilarious,” she laughs. “I mean, I don’t want to be a part of it but it’s hilarious.”
And what about the tracksuit – does she own one?
“Velour? No. But I do own a tracksuit, actually. It’s cashmere, £99, from Marks & Spencer.”
Earlier this year Joan and Percy had their 13th wedding anniversary after marrying at Claridge’s in 2002. She says: “Thirteen years is wool, so he bought me a beautiful woollen cap edged in fur, and I bought him beautiful cufflinks... not edged in fur.”
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Husband No.4: Joan married Peter Holm in 1985 but they were divorced two years later
While the actress doesn’t have a brilliant track record with men – as divorces from Maxwell Reed, Anthony Newley, Ron Kass and Peter Holm testify – Percy, it seems, is a keeper.
They are, she says, together “24 hours a day” – indeed, Percy is lunching in the same West Hollywood restaurant as us, four tables away – and trust is key to their relationship. And separate loos.
The couple also have open access to one another’s phones. “We share everything, we have no secrets,” she reveals. “We look at each other’s emails, we look at each other’s phones if we want.
"Here in LA we have to share a bathroom, which is hard, but we do have different loos. Marriage does take a certain amount of work, and you have to be considerate.
“A lot of women get married and after the initial flow of pheromones wears off, the husband will go to the pub and not come home, or he’ll start playing video games.
“But we interact all the time, we never stop talking... except at night when we love to watch television together.
“Our current obsession is Banshee, which my sister, Jackie, put me on to. It’s very sexual and violent. There’s a lot of blood, and full-frontal sex. It’s basically like porn.”
WireImage
For keeps: Joan and fifth husband Percy married in 2002
You see, Joan Collins really isn’t like most 81-year-olds. The award-winning actress, who recently launched her own Timeless Beauty make-up range, is tireless at work and at home.
On the secrets to a successful union, she adds: “The most important thing is to know your spouse really well. We do romantic things, and we leave little notes for each other.
“He likes to do things for me more than he lets me do things for him, although I do love to bring him coffee in the morning after he’s kept me up all night, snoring.
“Percy is the most kind and gentlemanly man.
“God forbid I should try and open a car door for myself, or carry a package. It’s wonderful. He is beyond fantastic with my family, they all adore him. He’s Prince Percy.
“There’s not the slightest question that we would ever break up.”
Tiger Aspect / ITV
Still got it: Joan as Crystal in Benidorm
While it is hard to imagine Joan ever being, or looking, less than immaculate – her hair and make-up are flawless, her monochrome outfit perfectly put together, her manicure pristine – she does, she admits, have her faults.
She expands: “We have things that irritate us about the other.
"Percy hates the fact I’m so quick; I wake up and am up, on the phone, doing my make-up, making coffee, doing three things at once. He’s slower to get going.
“He only drives with one hand and that irritates me. Of course we have little spats, it would be unnatural if we didn’t, but we adore each other.
“I think the biggest rows we’ve had are about my impatience and intolerance. Percy is polite, more so than me.
“Oh, and we row a bit about the fact he won’t exercise, whereas I try to go at least three times a week. But if we do row, we always make up.”
The screen legend talks about her amazing career and why she is backing calls for assisted dying to be legalised..........
Screen legend: Joan Collins
As I hover, awkwardly, for what seems an interminable amount of time, Dame Joan Collins clocks my hanging right hand. “Darling, I don’t shake hands,” she says, sashaying off.
Thus begins my lunch with showbusiness royalty and, as of the New Year honours list, a dame.
We may have got off to a shaky start but for the next 90 minutes Joan – sorry, Dame Joan – is a dream: feisty, witty and unapologetically opinionated.
Wearing a cowboy hat and Michael Jackson-esque sunglasses throughout, she exudes Hollywood glamour. I want to be Joan.
She’s 81 but she looks 20 years younger. Ahead of our interview, I was advised not to mention her age.
In fact,the actress reveals she is backing calls for assisted dying to be legalised.
She says: “You have to enjoy life, and I live totally in the present. Touch wood, I’ve never had any health problems... but my husband Percy’s mother had Alzheimer’s and that’s a terrifying illness. Big interview: Clemmie Moody with Joan Collins in LA
“Somebody said to me the other day that people 100 years ago didn’t get Alzheimer’s because they died so young, and that’s true.
“So if I was in that situation, I don’t know what I would do. It would depend on how bad it is. But I agree with Dignitas, totally.”
Referring to having a disease like Alzheimer’s, she says: “You don’t want to live like that... It is far better to drift off slowly.
“I have so many children, so many grandchildren, brothers and sisters, nieces and nephews, such a big family, and I wouldn’t want to inflict that on them.
“I mean, they don’t let animals carry on suffering – so why let humans live?”
At this point, Joan springs, puma-like, from her seat and moves beside me, complaining the sun is too hot on her back.
With a thrice-weekly workout regime, it is rumoured she is still able to do the splits.
Sitting in broad daylight in RivaBella, one of Joan’s favourite restaurants in Los Angeles, I keep peering at her face. It is flawless and I am mesmerised. Happy couple: Percy Gibson and Joan Collins
At one point, she clocks me staring and, ever the canny businesswoman, delves into her handbag for a foundation compact, part of her eponymous new Timeless Beauty range.
So how does she do it? “I’m religious about not getting the sun in my face,” she says.
“The sun is lethal out here so I always sunbathe wearing a hat, sunglasses and full make-up. I don’t mind ruining the skin on the rest of my body, just not the face.
“I have a few liver spots now but, look, you get old – and it’s far better than the alternative.”
A size 10, she is careful about what she eats but she’s normal with it.
Lunch is a grilled chicken salad with extra avocado, and she actually eats it.
“I watch my weight because I’m quite bosomy so if I don’t, I just look like a lump.
“I don’t count calories and I eat healthily, but I eat dairy.
“I don’t believe in all this no fat thing.”
In her own words, she “doesn’t suffer fools gladly”.
That hasn’t always been the case for the five-times wed star who has now been happily married to theatre director Percy Gibson since 2002.
Rex
Dynasty days: John Forsythe, Joan Collins and Linda Evans
After arriving in Hollywood, aged 20, in 1953, Joan was ordered by movie bosses to lose weight – and given a box of diet pills containing speed.
She laughs: “20th Century Fox told me I was too heavy and to get down to 8st. They put me on this diet.
“They sent me to a doctor who put me on little green pills, and in two weeks I hardly slept but lost 8lbs.”
On the subject of Oscars – Joan is on the voting panel – Patricia Arquette’s rousing acceptance speech last month calling for greater pay equality between the sexes was close to Dame Joan’s heart.
In 1981, Joan joined the then little-known, struggling new soap opera Dynasty.
Playing Alexis Carrington – the scorned ex-wife of tycoon Blake, played by John Forsythe – she was an instant hit. Four years later it was the top rated show in the US.
She was nominated six times for a Golden Globe Award, winning in 1983. But network bosses paid her less than her male counterparts.
Joan believes this inequality is still rampant today.
She says: “It’s endemic, and I think it’s so unfair. How do they get away with it?
“This is something women should be passionate about.” Young star: Joan Collins
While the actress has had a long and illustrious, award-winning career, she is just as well known for her role in 1978 “soft porn” movie The Stud.
Based on the 1969 novel by her sister, Jackie, it co-starred Oliver Tobias. In film posters, the pair were seen dangling naked on a sex swing above a swimming pool.
A Fifty Shades of Grey of its day, it was a box office hit. So, has Joan read or watched Fifty Shades? She shakes her head.
“I have no desire to,” she says. “When I think back to how tame The Stud was relatively, it’s amazing.
“Actors nowadays have to do all this awful swallow-the-face kissing.” Pausing briefly, Dame Joan adds: “At least it’s only the faces they’re swallowing.”
I ask her how she and Percy, a man 32 years her junior, keep things fresh after 13 years of marriage.
She tells me with a grin: “Although the passion inevitably does have to die down, the lust doesn’t have to go.
“Oh God, I never talk about this. I’m not going there... I have to have a little dignity... I am a dame now, after all.”
Joan’s marital history has been interesting to say the least. Glam: Joan Collins
Her first marriage was to film star Maxwell Reed in 1952.
In 1963 she wed actor and singer Anthony Newley with whom she had two children, Tara and Sacha.
Joan then had daughter Katyana with third husband Ronald Kass.
At the height of her Dynasty fame, Joan wed Swedish singer Peter Holm, a marriage that lasted just 13 months and ended badly. But with Percy, she appears to have found lasting happiness.
After meeting on the set of a stage production of Love Letters – “I asked Percy to buy me a new eyeliner, and he came back after half an hour clutching mascara; I knew then he wasn’t gay” – the pair became firm friends before their romance.
So why could it be that a woman who is so au fait with the naked body, and who posed for Playboy at the age of 50, refuses to shake hands with a stranger?
“It’s the biggest way to spread germs so I just make it a rule during the winter,” she says. “I don’t really care if people think I’m rude.
“Would I rather shake hands or kiss? I’d rather do neither, frankly. I’d rather do the Japanese thing of bowing gracefully...”
And, with that, the dame bows, and off she goes.
For more information, visit http://www.joancollinsbeauty.com/
It’s easy to take Star Trek for granted, to forget just how groundbreaking it was. The recent, Leonard Nimoy showed not only how much his character Spock meant to people, but also how important the show was – and still is. The programmes it competed with at the time are almost forgotten (anyone remember Gomer Pyle and Hondo?) while Star Trek went on to inspire an entire generation of scientists, teachers and explorers.
impossible to ignore outpouring of respect and affection for the passing of
Nimoy’s exceptional performance was just part of the considerable charm of the original series. Spock was one of an unbeatable trio of leads, completed byCaptain James T Kirk and Dr “Bones” McCoy. Kirk … all staccato ... speech patterns … and, ahem, enthusiastic emoting, needed Spock’s brains and McCoy’s heart to make the tough decisions. The show’s creator, Gene Roddenberry, made sure the world they lived in, although futuristic, was always something you could relate to. Before Star Trek, spaceships had looked like rockets or saucers and had names like XB-ZERO, but the unusually unaerodynamic USS Enterprise came with a name that put it in a lineage with seafaring vessels. The ship had a recognisable chain of command, similar to the earthbound military, and some of its best innovations were simply a result of budget limitations: rather than have landing parties touchdown on planets with costly model shots, they simply beamed down with the aid of a fizzy special effect.
The adventures were wide-ranging: they explored, they checked up on far-flung settlers, they fought off (or fled from) attackers. They settled disputes with warring species – often mirroring US foreign policy, with Klingons standing in for Russians. We saw Kirk wrestle a lizard man in Arena, outsmart a superior spacecraft in The Corbomite Maneuver, and even fight to the death with Spock in Amok Time. These colourful, action-packed tales usually came with some depth, thanks to such writers as Robert Bloch, Theodore Sturgeon and Harlan Ellison.
It was Ellison who wrote what is often voted the best episode, The City On the Edge of Forever, a high point not just for Star Trek but for TV itself. Due to some time-travelling mishap, Kirk and Spock find themselves marooned in depression-era New York where Kirk falls in love with Edith, who runs the homeless shelter that takes them in (Spock being sure to wear a woolly hat at all times to hide his ears). But Edith, touchingly played by Joan Collins, is fated to meet her death a few days later. Crucially, if she doesn’t, she’ll go on to start a pacifist movement that keeps the US out of the second world war long enough for the Nazis to perfect their atomic bomb and seize victory. Can the captain stand by and watch the woman he loves die?
It was revolutionary in other, less heralded ways, too. Star Trek just didn’t look like other shows. This was because, in those early days of colour TV, networks banned the use of tinted lighting. Gerald Perry Finnerman, Star Trek’s main cinematographer, refused to play ball, using brightly hued colour schemes that gave the show an otherworldly look that is striking today, even on HD setups.
That’s not to say that everything was perfect. The less said about the reduced-budget third season the better. Roddenberry was replaced by the ill-suited producer Fred Freiberger (who later did a similar hatchet job on Space: 1999). The going went from boldly to badly and the series was cancelled shortly afterwards. Yet, largely thanks to unprecedented fan response, it became a phenomenon, spawning four spinoff shows (with The Next Generation arguably eclipsing the original in popularity), a cartoon series, countless books and comics, plus a dozen movies. Live long and prosper indeed.
From sleazy casting directors to embittered rival actresses, during a stellar 60-year career in showbiz, Joan Collins has seen – and survived – it all. But only just.
It’s easy to take Star Trek for granted, to forget just how groundbreaking it was. The recent, Leonard Nimoy showed not only how much his character Spock meant to people, but also how important the show was – and still is. The programmes it competed with at the time are almost forgotten (anyone remember Gomer Pyle and Hondo?) while Star Trek went on to inspire an entire generation of scientists, teachers and explorers.
It was Ellison who wrote what is often voted the best episode, The City On the Edge of Forever, a high point not just for Star Trek but for TV itself. Due to some time-travelling mishap, Kirk and Spock find themselves marooned in depression-era New York where Kirk falls in love with Edith, who runs the homeless shelter that takes them in (Spock being sure to wear a woolly hat at all times to hide his ears). But Edith, touchingly played by Joan Collins, is fated to meet her death a few days later. Crucially, if she doesn’t, she’ll go on to start a pacifist movement that keeps the US out of the second world war long enough for the Nazis to perfect their atomic bomb and seize victory. Can the captain stand by and watch the woman he loves die?